A GIANT asteroid standing taller than the Great Pyramid of Giza will zip past the planet early next week, space agency NASA has revealed.

The monster asteroid, dubbed by NASA Asteroid 2016 AZ8, is expected to make a so-called “Earth Close Approach”. The asteroid will reach its closest possible distance to our homeworld in the early morning hours of Monday, January 7. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) scientists in Pasadena, California, estimate a close flyby at around 6.41am GMT (UTC). And the space rock’s impressive dimensions are a more than good enough reason to track the asteroid’s trajectory past Earth.

Based on calculations by the Earth Impact Effects Program, a hint project between the Imperial College London and Purdue University, the impact force of a similarly sized asteroid equals about 3,300 megatons of TNT.

Near-Earth Objects are asteroids and comets that come close to or pass across Earth’s orbit

NASA

The exact force of impact will vary depending on the speed and composition of Asteroid AZ8 but the potential for cataclysm and loss of human life is extreme.

Thankfully, none of this will come to pass because the asteroid will miss the planet by many millions of miles.

At its closest, the asteroid will reach 0.02978 astronomical units (au) or 11.59 Lunar Distances (LD) from Earth.